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Humans and Hydrology at High Latitudes: Community Information

CONTACT:

Daniel White
University of Alaska Fairbanks Campus
Adm Svcs Ctr Rm 109
Fairbanks, AK 99709

907 474-7314
dmwhite@alaska.edu

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR:

Daniel White

CO-PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR:

Lilian Alessa

FUNDING SOURCE AND GRANT NUMBER:

NSF grant OPP-0531148

DATA SET OVERVIEW:

This data set contains detailed community information for regions of Canada and Alaska. These data are utilized in the ArcticRIMS project to improve the development of the water stress model. This water stress model shows the effects of water resources, humans and climate change in the Arctic.

Recent studies suggest that climate change will have a significant impact on Arctic hydrology. However, it is currently unknown which regions of the pan-Arctic are most vulnerable to future changes. In order to begin to address the future change to freshwater availability on a pan-Arctic scale, a system of Arctic typologies were used to enable the integration of biophysical data with socio-cultural data produced regionally, such as demographics and water values. Those mature data sets were used to study the strategic transformations of the high latitude water cycle. The overall objective of this research is to use a wide array of existing data sets in a synthesis effort to describe the vital role of freshwater in the lives of people in the pan-Arctic, how it has changed in the recent past, and how it is likely to change in the future.

DATA COLLECTION and PROCESSING:

This data set is comprised of the data that were evaluated. Not all were used in detail, but all were considered, as noted.

Community database information for Alaska. Spreadsheets of community data from Alaska communities can be accessed through the following link to the Alaskan state website: www.commerce.state.ak.us/dca/commdb/CF_COMDB.htm. A composite data file from this website titled “ADCA_composite.xls” is included in this data set. The data description and legend is included in the spreadsheet in the sheet named “fields”.
Community database information for Canada. These data are located in portable document format (.pdf) files at the following web site: www.cbc.ca/slowboil/documents.html. These data have been summarized in a spreadsheet titled “CBC_community_reports_summarized.xls”.

DATA FORMAT:

Data are formatted as tab-delimited Excel spreadsheet (.xls) and ZIP (.zip) format files.

File Naming Conventions and Structure

The following describes the data file structure for this data set:

Filename	Description
ADCA_composite.xls	Composite file of the detailed community data for the State of Alaska, Excel
ADCA_composite_ASCII.zip	Comma-separated value (.csv) files taken from the sheets within the spreadsheet “ADCA_composite.xls”
CBC_community_reports_summarized.xls	Composite file of the detailed community data for Canada, by province, Excel
CBC_community_reports_summarized_ASCII.zip	Comma-separated value (.csv) files taken from the sheets within the spreadsheet “CBC_community_reports_summarized.xls”

DATA REMARKS:

In reference to “ADCA_composite.xls”:

The original community database for the State of Alaska can be found here: www.commerce.state.ak.us/dca/commdb/CF_COMDB.htm.
The data description and legend can be found in the spreadsheet in the sheet named “fields”.

In reference to “CBC_community_reports_summarized.xls”:

The original community database for Canada can be found here: www.cbc.ca/slowboil/documents.html in PDF file format.